New York doctors remove tooth growing inside man's nose

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Doctors at a New York hospital said a man who came in complaining of difficulty breathing through his right nostril was found to have a tooth growing in his nasal cavity.

Drs. Sagar Khanna and Michael Turner, surgeons with the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, said in a case study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that the 38-year-old man told doctors he had been having trouble breathing through his right nostril for several years.

Doctors discovered he had a deviated septum -- a condition in which the partition between nasal passages is pushed to one side -- and a rhinoscopy conducted with a small camera discovered the cause -- a tooth growing on "the floor of the right nostril."

The ectopic tooth, a term for a tooth growing in an abnormal place, was measured at about .6 inch long.

The surgeons said they removed the tooth without complications, and the man reported during a follow-up visit three months after the procedure that he was able to breath normally through both nostrils.